Back to: Measurement and Evaluation in Education B.ed Notes, M.A Notes, IGNOU Notes and Graduation Notes
The Taxonomy of Educational Objectives
It is often called Bloom’s Taxonomy. It is a classification of the different objectives and skills that educators set for students. Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives is a hierarchical ordering of skills in different domains whose primary use is to help teachers teach and students learn effectively and efficiently.
The meaning of Bloom’s taxonomy can be understood by exploring its three learning domains—cognitive, affective and psychomotor.
The cognitive domain
It involves the development of our mental skills and the acquisition of knowledge. Skills in the cognitive domain revolve around knowledge, comprehension, and “thinking through” a particular topic. Traditional education tends to emphasize the skills in this domain, particularly the lower-order objectives.
Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation are the six levels in the taxonomy, moving through the lowest order processes to the highest.
Affective domain
Skills in the affective domain describe the way people react emotionally and their ability to feel another living being’s pain or joy. Affective objectives typically target the awareness and growth in attitudes, emotions and feelings.
Receiving, Responding, Valuing, Organizing and Characterizing are five levels in the affective domain moving through the lowest order processes to the highest.
So, we can say that Affective domain is related with our emotions, attitude, feelings, values and motivations.
Psychomotor
Skills in the psychomotor domain describe the ability to physically manipulate a tool or instrument like a hand or a hammer. Psychomotor objectives usually focus on change and/or development in behaviour and/or skills.
Role of bloom’s cognitive theory in curriculum development
There are a variety of methods in professional development events to engage the different learning domains. Bloom’s Taxonomy helps the teachers to understand the objectives of classroom teaching by guiding them to alter the complexity of the questions and helps students to achieve higher levels of hierarchy. Further, it also helps to develop critical thinking among teachers.
